Bizarre Tech Job Interview Questions Stump Candidates

Job community Glassdoor.dom has published the 25 oddest interview questions of 2010, based on more than 80,000 questions shared by candidates on its website.

0shares

Chew on this: given the numbers 1 to 1,000, what is the minimum number of guesses needed to find a specific number if you are given the hint "higher" or "lower" for each guess you make?

If you can answer that, you may have a shot at being a software engineer at Facebook.

Job community Glassdoor.dom has published the 25 oddest interview questions of 2010, based on more than 80,000 questions shared by candidates on its Web site. Below are questions allegedly asked during interviews at Apple, Google, Amazon, and other tech companies.

"How many basketball[s] can you fit in this room?" - asked at Google, People Analyst position

"If you could be any superhero, who would it be?" - asked at AT&T, Customer Sales Representative position

"If you had 5,623 participants in a tournament, how many games would need to be played to determine the winner?" - asked at Amazon, Manager position

"There are three boxes, one contains only apples, one contains only oranges, and one contains both apples and oranges. The boxes have been incorrectly labeled such that no label identifies the actual contents of the box it labels. Opening just one box, and without looking in the box, you take out one piece of fruit. By looking at the fruit, how can you immediately label all of the boxes correctly?"  asked at Apple, Software QA Engineer position

How do you weigh an elephant without using a weigh machine?" - asked at IBM, Software Engineer position

You have 8 pennies, 7 weigh the same, one weighs less. You also have a judges scale. Find the one that weighs less in less than 3 steps." - asked at Intel, Systems Validation Engineer position

A train leaves San Antonio for Huston at 60mph. Another train leaves Huston for San Antonio at 80mph. Huston and San Antonio are 300 miles apart. If a bird leaves San Antonio at 100mph, and turns around and flies back once it reaches the Huston train, and continues to fly between the two, how far will it have flown when they collide." - asked at USAA, Software Engineer position

For Glassdoor.com's full list of Top 25 Oddball Interview Questions, see its blog post.

Sara Yin is a junior analyst in the Software, Internet, and Networking group at PCmag.com, pouring most of her energy into app testing and security matters at Security Watch with Neil Rubenking. She lies awake at night pondering the state of mobile security (half-true).
Prior to joining PCMag.com, Sara spent five years reporting for publications in New York City (Huffington Post), Hong Kong (South China Morning Post), and Singapore (Campaign Asia, Men's Health).
Follow her on Twitter at @SecurityWatch and @sarapyin, or contact her the...
More »

Automatic Renewal Program: Your subscription will continue without interruption for as long as you wish, unless
you instruct us otherwise. Your subscription will automatically renew at the end of the term unless you authorize
cancellation. Each year, you'll receive a notice and you authorize that your credit/debit card will be charged the
annual subscription rate(s). You may cancel at any time during your subscription and receive a full refund on all
unsent issues. If your credit/debit card or other billing method can not be charged, we will bill you directly instead. Contact Customer Service

//our current issue

Select Term:

24 issues for $29.99 ONLY $1.25 an issue! Lock in Your Savings!

12 issues for $19.99ONLY $1.67 an issue!

State

Country

This transaction is secure

Automatic Renewal Program: Your subscription will continue without interruption for as long as you wish, unless
you instruct us otherwise. Your subscription will automatically renew at the end of the term unless you authorize
cancellation. Each year, you'll receive a notice and you authorize that your credit/debit card will be charged the
annual subscription rate(s). You may cancel at any time during your subscription and receive a full refund on all
unsent issues. If your credit/debit card or other billing method can not be charged, we will bill you directly instead. Contact Customer Service